1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to building components of the self-aligning type used to quickly and easily form load bearing, insulated walls, and relates further to the method of constructing such a wall and the wall so constructed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The well-known, time-honored method of constructing load bearing insulated walls (using a multitude of individual building components and added insulation) has been to form a construction block or brick wall by hand mortaring, laying and leveling each piece. The builder may apply insulation to the outside or inside of the block or block wall by various means and methods before, or after, the laying of the construction block. The laying of the block and the application of the insulation is a slow process which is beginning to outdate itself due to increases in the cost of labor and the skill of that labor in today's construction market. Also, due to the length of time that it takes to build a building using these old methods, there is a resultant increase in the cost of borrowing money for the builder if he chooses the "block plus insulation method" over newer and quicker alternate methods of construction, such as wall panels, precast, or tilt-up operations.
Further costs are also due to today's greater portion in percentage of the total job cost that labor represents when comparing this with the other costs of materials and overhead.
The old methods are labor intensive not only in the constructing of the wall but also in adding to or incorporating into the wall the insulation and other desirable surface finishes, due to its usual less than perfect inside level face.
To summarize, most of the old methods' excess costs are a result of a slow building rate, a requirement of too great a percentage of skilled labor per job, and the usually less than perfect wall surfaces which slow down the insulation and/or finish work.
To date, especially in recent years, various inventors and entrepreneurs have tried to come up with a system which would solve most of the problems above discussed in each of their individual trade areas. Many self-aligning and/or interlocking bricks or blocks have been devised with or without bonding systems for quick load-bearing walls. All have solved various problems, but most failed due to the fact that they could not be consistently manufactured, or that they were too difficult or costly to construct. The few that experienced some financial success were practical in only limited ways.
In the insulation trade inventions in quickly applied systems have gained recognition as labor and time saving. Further success of these systems has been mainly due to the reduction of the so-called "thermal bridge" through the wall, i.e., improvement in the wall's thermal insulation benefits.
More recently, instead of concentrating on increasing the cost efficiency and effectiveness of the block layer's and the insulation applicator's respective trades, "specialized manufacturing" has been introduced in an effort to link these two building trades together as one. This effort has been carried out by adding insulation into the block cores before, during or after the wall is laid. These two trades then become incorporated as one when such blocks are sold directly to the block layer, thereby eliminating the insulation installation cost. All of the new systems in this effort have fallen short in at least one or more critical areas in solving the problems herein discussed. These areas are (1) effective load bearing, (2) effective insulation and (3) quick effective construction, where all must prove to be cost effective on a final per square foot analysis. Even with the wall panel systems preconstructed at the plant with insulation, brick and mortar sandwiched together as a panel, there is still a necesity to supply a crane, specialized transport, skilled men and the necessity in most cases to consider height and load limitations. With such wall panel systems the specialization and planning is more critical, raising overhead and resultant per square foot cost. Good savings can be realized, but in specialized markets only. The general construction market has still not been provided with an overall solution giving rise to cost savings in the broad view of the market. The dwindling of the bricklayer's trade and the boom of alternate systems such as aluminum siding bears witness to this.
Though all the new systems have success and advantages in specialized areas of construction, they still need to, for the most part, eliminate the major skill and/or equipment requirement in either producing the materials and/or constructing a quickly formed, load bearing insulated wall, to effect new cost savings to stimulate new construction.
It has been proposed to assemble self aligning, insulated building components into wall formations without the necessity of applying a bonding material by hand. Thus, by pumping a bonding material, such as mortar, via a mortar nozzle tube lowered into inner vertically aligned openings formed by each component as positioned in the wall, all or a desired portion of the inner horizontal and vertical cavities may be filled with bonding material. These filled cavities may be positioned to form a total inner grid pattern. However, such insulated load-bearing walls of the prior art have not been capable of having mortar pumped into the inner horizontal cavities of the assembled wall and properly bonding all the insulated components together.
The advent of the so-called energy crisis and the inflated and still rapidly growing cost of construction, mandate that the aforementioned problems be solved. Furthermore, new minimum insulative values, e.g. R-19, and higher, must be reqiured for walls constructed in most locales.
Therefore, there is an acute need for a self-aligning building component adapted for quickly forming load-bearing, insulative walls. Preferably, such a component should provide simple and accurate means for self alignment of the components in a load-bearing relationship, while presenting a high insulative value--a combination never before achieved in a component wall. Further, the component should lend ease in manufacturing and consistency in dimensions, structural integrity and insulative value.